USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut > Part 58
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 | Part 106 | Part 107
Mr. Patterson is a member of the Cleve- land Chamber of Commerce, votes his politics independently, and with his family worships in the Catholic faith. At Cleveland October 11, 1899, he married Margaret M. Deasy, Their three children are: Charles J., Kent J., and Margaret M. The two sons are both in high school and the daughter is attending Notre Dame Convent.
GILBERT EUGENE MORGAN, junior member of the law firm of C. F. & G. E. Morgan, for several years past has been particularly inter- ested in his profession in connection with the organizations of export corporations.
He was born at Cleveland, Ohio, December 18, 1887. a son of Charles F. and Mary (Roach) Morgan, and a grandson of John and Elizabeth (Leonard) Morgan. Charles F. Morgan, his father, was born at Oberlin, Ohio, August 3, 1851, and was graduated from Oberlin College August 7, 1872, being admit- ted to the bar of Ohio at Cleveland in 1874. Since that time he has been engaged in the practice of law. After attending the graded schools of Cleveland, Mr. Morgan, Jr., entered Shaw High School, of East Cleveland, and graduated therefrom in 1905. His education was completed at Western Reserve University in 1910, in which year he was graduated, and the same year was admitted to the bar of Ohio. At that time he engaged in a general practice, but in the following October en- tered the employ of the Standard Oil Com- pany of New Jersey, in organizing sales com- panies in the Argentine Republic, the republic
300
CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS
of Paraguay and Western Brazil, in South America, but resigned his position in 1914, and on January 25, 1915, formed a partner- ship with his father, under the style of C. F. & G. E. Morgan, with offices in the Engineers Building. Mr. Morgan is a member of the Cleveland Bar Association and the Ohio State Bar Association. He is independent in poli- tics and is interested in needed civic reform. He belongs to the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce and to the foreign trade committee of that body, is president of the Foreign Trade Club of Cleveland, and manager of the Standard Trading Company. He is greatly interested in philological research as relates to modern languages and dialects, and is ac- quainted with Italian, Spanish, German, French, Hungarian and Russian languages. This knowledge makes possible his coming into close contact with foreigners here and abroad. His religious connection is with St. John's Beckwith Memorial Church, where he is su- perintendent of the Sunday school.
Mr. Morgan was married at Vermillion, Ohio, Angust 30, 1915, to Ruth Adelaide Schulte, daughter of Edward S. Schulte, of Cleveland.
WILLIAM M. HARTY'S position in Cleveland industrial circles will be readily appreciated when it is said that he is general manager of The Cooper Spring Company, an industry that was established here forty years ago and has had a remarkably solid and substantial growth and development and with an extraordinary increase in facilities and volume of product since Mr. Harty, who is a veteran spring man- ufacturer, took charge of the plant.
Mr. Harty was born at New Haven, Connec- ticut, September 8, 1869, a son of William M. and Jane (Markham) Harty. Until he was twelve years of age his education was snper- vised in a private school at Johnstown, Penn- sylvania, and after that he was in the public schools of Portsmouth, Ohio, until sixteen. Leaving school he prepared himself for a use- ful life by a six months' service as apprentice mechanic with the Detroit Steel & Spring Company. He served in the same capacity one year in Chicago with the Chicago Spring Company, and after that traveled from city to city working as a spring maker in various spring manufacturing plants for a period of ten years. Again returning to Detroit he had charge of the vehicle spring department of the Detroit Steel & Spring Company, and was subsequently transferred to the railroad spring
department of the same industry. In 1901 that business was consolidated with the Rail- way Steel Springs Company, with which Mr. Harty continued as superintendent until July, 1902. The corporation then sent him to an- other plant at Oswego, New York, where he was superintendent until January, 1903.
Returning to Detroit Mr. Harty was one of the men who organized The Detroit Steel Products Company, and was its superinten- dent a year. From there going to St. Louis he was superintendent of the Railway Steel Spring Company's plant for three years and then came to Cleveland and joined forces with The Cooper Spring Company as general man- ager. The history of this old. and substantial institution began in 1878, when it was estab- lished by George Cooper. At that time the business was one of jobbing in carriage hard- ware and the manufacture of carriage springs. For forty years the location of the plant has been at the corner of Main and Center streets. In the past ten years since Mr. Harty took charge as superintendent the business has grown five-fold, and the company now em- ploys between 120 and 175 hands and occupies all of the 55,000 square feet of floor space in the factory. Almost all the facilities are now used for the manufacture of automobile springs. The president of the company is I. C. Cooper, Benjamin Neals is vice president, I. W. Osborne is secretary and treasurer, and Mr. Harty general manager.
Mr. Harty is also secretary and treasurer of The F. J. Nice Burner Company. He is a member of the Cleveland Automobile Club, is a republican, and a Presbyterian. On June 23, 1889, at Jackson, Michigan, he married Miss Carrie H. Hodges. Their only son, Charles H., is superintendent of The Cooper Spring Company.
STEPHEN HENDERSON PITKIN is vice presi- dent of the Wellman-Seaver-Morgan Company of Cleveland, one of the largest engineering corporations in the world. He came into this larger corporation through his former associa- tions with one of the oldest iron mannfactur- ing concerns of Akron, the Globe Foundry, which was established at Akron when it was a small and unpretentious village seventy years ago. One of the original members of the firm was Charles Webster. Webster re- tained a place in the business for many years, and in 1869 the firm became the Webster, Camp & Lane Machine Company. This firm made a specialty of heavy machinery for
301
CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS
hydraulic and mining and factory purposes. About fifteen years ago the company built ex- tesive shops in South Akron, and at the same time the company's interests were transferred to the Wellman-Seaver-Morgan Company of Cleveland, and the Akron works have since been operated as the Webster, Camp & Lane division of the larger corporation.
Some thirty or thirty-five years ago S. H. Pitkin went to work for the Webster, Camp & Lane Machine Company of Akron as an ap- prentice in the machine department. He was advanced to the position of mechanical drafts- man and finally became secretary and general manager of the company. He held those of- fices from 1887 until 1903, when, the company having been consolidated with the Wellman- Seaver-Morgan Company, Mr. Pitkin was made vice president of the larger corporation.
Mr. Pitkin was born at Troy, Ilinois, Oc- tober 26, 1860. Though he is himself a native of Illinois his family has a prominent place in the history of the old Western Reserve of Ohio. His grandfather, Caleb Pitkin, was born at New Hartford, Connecticut, February 27, 1781, and he graduated from Yale College in 1806, was installed as pastor of the Second Congregational Church of Milford, Connecti- cut, March 6, 1808, and continued its pastorate until his resignation in October, 1816. The following year he came to the western frontier, locating in the new Connecticut of Ohio, and in April of 1817 was installed as pastor of the First Congregational Church of Charlestown, Ohio.
Cleveland is especially interested in his his- tory because he was one of the founders and early supporters of Western Reserve College, while that institution was located at Hudson. He made the address at the laying of the cor- nerstone of the first college building at Hud- son. For many years afterwards he carried the heavy responsibilities of looking after the finances of the college and traveled and preached all over the Western Reserve, seek- ing collections and donations toward the sup- port of the institution. In 1828 he took up his home at Hudson and continued his arduous labors in behalf of Western Reserve College almost to the time of his death, which occurred February 5, 1864. On June 15, 1807, he mar- ried Anna Henderson, of New Hartford, Con- necticut. They were the parents of three sons and two daughters.
Caleb Johnson Pitkin, father of S. H. Pitkin, was horn at Old Milford, Connecticut, Decem- ber 4, 1812, and was a small child when his
family came to the Ohio Western Reserve. In 1836 he graduated from Western Reserve College and in 1839 completed his theological course in the same institution. His life was distinguished by many years of ministerial service. He was pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Bloomfield in Trumbull County, Ohio, from 1843 to 1850 and was pastor of Presbyterian and Congregational churches at Sandusky from 1850 to 1853. In 1856 he moved his scene of labors to Winchester, Scott County, Illinois, and was successively pastor of Presbyterian churches at Winchester, Troy, Marine, and Vandalia, Illinois, also at Cerro Gordo in Piatt County of that state until 1873. He died at Vandalia in May, 1887. At Gran- ville, Ohio, May 27, 1840, Rev. Caleb J. Pit- kin married Elizabeth Bancroft, a daughter of Gerard P. and Jane Bancroft, of the prom- inent New England family of that name. Caleb J. Pitkin and wife became the parents of nine sons and two daughters. One of the sons, Albert J. Pitkin, was one of the organ- izers of the American Locomotive Company and was president of the corporation at the time of his death.
S. H. Pitkin was reared in several com- munities where his father was a minister, but finished his education in the high school of Akron. From high school he at once went to work for the Webster, Camp & Lane Machine Company. Mr. Pitkin is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and of the American Institute of Mining En- gineers. He belongs to the Engineers' Club of New York, is a member of the Portage Coun- try Club of Akron, Cleveland Athletic Club and is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner.
May 1, 1895, he married Bessie Hamilton Alexander, of Akron. They have four chil- dren : Marion M. is the wife of Rev. Charles N. St. John, of Cuyahoga Falls; Elizabeth A., who spent two years at Erie College at Paines- ville, Ohio; Grace A., a student in the Akron High School; Francis, aged eighteen, now a student in the Case School of Applied Sci- ence at Cleveland.
OTTO A. HASSE. Some men come very rap- idly to maturity of responsibilities and abili- ties, but it is doubtful if any Cleveland man has made hetter use of the opportunities of the passing years than Otto A. IIasse. While it would be difficult to emulate him, his career is in fact an inspiration to all ambitious young men.
302
CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS
He was born at Cleveland August 2, 1886, son' of Charles and Helen Hasse.
One of three children, Otto A. Hasse was educated in the public schools, graduating from the Cleveland High School in 1905, at the age of nineteen. What he has accom- plished in a business way has been done in a period of thirteen years, which is not a long time even in a human life. His first position was as cost clerk with the Sherwin-Williams Company, paint manufacturers. After about six months some special proficiency discovered in him caused his advancement to the adver- tising and editorial department. Six months later the company sent him to the same depart- ment in the offices at Newark, New Jersey, where he remained two years. The next step was to the sales department where he continued two years, and was then transferred back to Cleveland as assistant to the manager of the insecticide department. He was there two years, then became manager of various de- partments. In another year he had position of manager of the entire sale of varnishes con- ferred upon his already rapidly accumulating duties, and six months later he took still fur- ther responsibilities as manager of trade sales. In February, 1917, the Sherwin-Williams Company made Mr. Hasse manager of the en- tire sales department of paints and varnishes. This position needless to say is synonymous with an almost nation-wide prominence in the paint industry of America. In December, 1917, however, he resigned to accept the more attractive offer as vice president and director of the Glidden Company, paints and varnish manufacturers of Cleveland.
Mr. Hasse is a member of the Cleveland Athletic Club, Union Club, Mayfield Country Club, Dover Bay Country Club, and is affili- ated with Tyrian Lodge Free and Accepted Masons, Webb Chapter Roval Arch Masons, Holyrood Commandery Knights Templar, and Al Koran Temple of the Mystic Shrine. As to politics he is independent in the choice of his candidates for office and is a member of the Unitarian faith. At Cleveland June 17, 1912, Mr. Hasse married Viola Peairs. They have two children, Arthur Peairs, born in 1915, and Phyllis Eileen, born in 1917.
JOHN HARRIS. While a manufacturer, founder and head of The Harris Calorific Company, John Harris is pre-eminently an in- ventor, originator, and an expert authority on all phases of the science which employs the use of high temperature gas apparatus for
weldings and cutting of metals. The use of acetylene and other gases for the production of high temperatures in different classes of mechanical and manufacturing practice is hardly more than twenty years old, and from the very first Mr. Harris has been a student and experimenter with these materials. There could be found none to question his pre-emi- nence as an authority on high temperature gas combustion and utilization.
The Harris Calorific Company, which was established in 1905 and incorporated in 1906, publishes a catalogue containing a large and varied line of welding apparatus, and the va- rious torches, burners, generators and other apparatus, and of practically everything illus- trated in that catalogue Mr. Harris is the de- signer and inventor.
His is another illustration of the power and resources of the individual mind sufficient to raise a boy from humble condition and en- vironment to a place of real and substantial success in American industry. He was born at Frackville, Pennsylvania, January 17, 1872, son of William J. and Emma (Bauch- man) Harris. His education was limited, be- ing finished when he was only eight years old. But his was the type of mind, eager, ardent, thirsting for discovery and utilization of the resources about it, which could not be ham- pered by lack of formal education. For seven years his life was a dull round of hard work as a boy laborer picking slate on the breakers of the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company. He was paid only $3 a week for his labor. At the age of sixteen he had what he regarded as a distinct promotion when he was made brakeman with the Philadelphia & Reading Railway Company. Later he was employed as a fireman with the same road. Mr. Harris came to Cleveland in 1895. Here for two years he was engaged in building ma- chinery for the Loew Filter Company. He resigned that position to start The Harris Manufacturing Company, of which he was director and manager. This company manu- factured some of the first and crude types of generators for acetylene house lighting plants.
Mr. Harris left that business in 1901 to go to Buffalo to design and construct the apparatus for the Pan-American Acetylene Company at the Pan-American Exposition. He remained at the exposition for seven months. Return- ing to Cleveland, he established the J. Harris Company, manufacturing acetylene stoves and instantaneous water heaters and high pres- sure acetylene bunsens.
H.G. Slan
303
CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS
Selling out his interest in that business, Mr. Harris in May, 1905, established The Harris Calorific Company for the manufacture of high temperature laboratory appliances using primarily acetylene gas. In 1906 he organ- ized the business anew under the name of The Braze-Weld Company and The Metals Weld- ing Company, and designed all the equipment manufactured by these firms, including the high pressure generators for welding and the Oxy-acetylene welding and cutting torches. He was consulting. engineer and director of the latter company until 1914. In that year he again established The Harris Calorific Com- pany, and in 1916, when it was incorporated he became vice president and general man- ager. The president is John Hall, the secre- tary and treasurer Wilber Harris.
This business was begun on a capital of $25,000, but in March, 1917, the capital was increased to $150,000. Today the industry is 100 times as large in point of manufacturing facilities and general importance as it was when it started. Mr. Harris had only six men to assist him in the laboratory and shop at the beginning, and today there are twenty- eight employes. Beginning with 1,100 square feet of floor space in October, 1917, the com- pany moved into a specially fitted new build- ing at 2828 Washington Avenue, where they have 13,000 square feet of floor space avail- able.
Mr. Harris is also president of The Radiant Heater Company and is consulting engineer of The Carbo-Hydrogen Company of America and president and manager of The American Aeroplane Company. Since Mr. Harris came to Cleveland about twenty-three years ago he has perfected and taken out 110 patents on his ideas, and the majority of them cover appliances and apparatus actually in use and in daily performance in connection with the employment of high temperature gases in welding of metals.
Politically Mr. Harris is a democrat. In 1902 at Cleveland he married Miss Caroline A. King. They have one son, William Earl, now in charge of the chaplet department of The Fanner Manufacturing Company.
HENRY CHISHOLM OSBORN is one of the successful young business men of America. Forty years old, he has for the past fifteen years been the directing executive head and president of The American Multigraph Com- pany. That position alone would be sufficient to inspire interest in his personal career and Vol. II-20
achievements on the part of probably a ma- jority of the world's workers in commercial affairs.
There are many ties and associations to identify him with Cleveland. Ile is a native of the city, born May 10, 1878. The family has been prominent in Cleveland for over half a century. Before coming to Cleveland the Osborns were residents for several generations of New York State. Grandfather William Os- born was born February 6, 1799, in Albany, New York, and for many years was a merchant tailor of that city. Ile had an active personal friendship with many of the prominent public men of New York, and was especially intimate with Thurlow Weed of the Albany Journal. He was one of the New York abolitionists. William Osborn died in 1887. He married Ann Amelia Hotchkiss, a native of New York, and she was the mother of five children.
Alanson T. Osborn, father of Henry C., was born in Albany County, New York, April 11, 1845, and for many years was prominent in manufacturing and business affairs at Cleveland. He acquired a public school edu- cation in New York State and his business ex- perience prior to coming to Cleveland was as chief clerk in the Horseheads postoffice in New York. In September, 1862, at the age of seven- teen, he arrived at Cleveland and his first em- ployer was R. P. Myers, a stove, tinplate and tinners' supply manufacturer. Eventually he acquired an interest in the business, conducted as Myers, Osborn & Company. In 1868 he transferred his active business connection to the Sherwin-Williams Company and for four- teen years was one of the contributing factors to the success of that great paint industry. In 1882 he employed his wide and valuable experience to engage in the retail paint and supply business, and conducted a successful enterprise at Cleveland until he retired in 1906.
Almost from the time he came to Cleveland Alanson T. Osborn took a prominent part in church and civic affairs. He became one of the leading members of the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church, was president of the Board of Trustees of the Baptist IIome of Northern Ohio, was president and vice president of the Cleveland Baptist Mission Society, and was trustee, treasurer and served on most of the important committees of the Young Men's Christian Association. He was early identi- fied with the Cleveland Chamber of Com- merce and in politics has steadily adhered to the cause of the republican party, having come
304
CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS
into that party largely as a result of his boy- hood service as a Union soldier. He served a brief time with the One Hundred and Fiftieth Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
On October 7, 1868, Alanson T. Osborn married Catherine A. Chisholm, daughter of Henry and Jean (Allan) Chisholm of Scotch ancestry. Henry Chisholm was one of the founders and later president of The Cleve- land Rolling Mills. Mrs. Alanson T. Osborn shared with her husband an active interest in many causes, served as member of the Board of the Protestant Orphans Home, as president of the Board of Lady Managers of the Baptist Home of Northern Ohio, and in the Ladies Society of the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church. The fine old Osborn home was at 2317 Euclid Avenue, where the family lived until 1912, when they moved to East Seventy-Fifth Street. They also have a country home at Hazeldean on Gardner Road in Nottingham. Alanson T. Osborn and wife have two sons and a daugh- ter. Willam A., the oldest, is a graduate of Cleveland Public and High schools and Yale University, completing his post-graduate work in the latter institution in 1894. He was for a time chief chemist for The American Steel & Wire Company at Cleveland and has devoted much of his time to amateur photography and chemical research and was one of the first ama- tenrs to use color photography. The dangh- ter, Jean, is the wife of R. G. A. Phillips, vice president of The American Multigraph Com- pany.
Henry Chisholm Osborn undoubtedly ac- quired some prominent talents from his fore- fathers, though inheritance would not be suffi- cient to account for his achievements. He was educated in the public schools of Cleveland, in the University School and the Case School of Applied Science. With a thorough train- ing as a mechanical engineer he became con- nected with the Amstutz-Osborn Company, which he organized for the purpose of develop- ing inventions. The firm name was later changed to The Osborn-Morgan Company. Thus was provided the business organization in which the multigraph invention found a favoring environment. It was in 1901, while Mr. Osborn was president of The Osborn-Mor- gan Company that Mr. H. C. Gammeter, in- ventor of the multigraph, and concerning whom an interesting sketch is published on other pages, brought to Mr. Osborn's atten- tion what was then called the Gammeter multi- graph. It was described as nothing more than an inventor's dream. Mr. Osborn for-
tunately for the inventor and for the business world, realized its value and the possibilities of the future. He placed at the disposal of the inventor every means in his power for the adequate development of the machine.
In 1902 The American Multigraph Company was organized with Mr. Osborn as president. This new company took over the property of The Osborn-Morgan Company, which then consisted of a one-story frame factory, with 4,000 square feet of floor space located at East Fortieth Street and Kelly Avenue in Cleve- land, and a general equipment of machinery. The first multigraph was placed on the mar- ket in March, 1905. As a machine, the multi- graplı, one of the greatest additions ever made to commercial office and labor saving machin- ery, is too well known to require elaborate de- scription. Its popularity was almost imme- diate, and the business grew so rapidly from the start that in July, 1906, a four-story brick building with 36,000 square feet of floor space was erected on the site of the old factory. In March, 1909, two additional stories were added, in July, 1913, an entirely new build- ing was constructed, and in February, 1918, a 50,000 square foot addition was added. In March, 1909, the Universal Folding Machine Company of Chicago was absorbed, giving the Multigraph Company a line of machinery for the folding of stationery and thus increasing the company's list of office appliances.
At the present time The American Multi- graph Company has branch offices in London, Berlin and Paris and forty-one branch offices in the United States and Canada. These are all under the business supervision of The American Multigraph Sales Company, a sub- sidiary organization of The American Multi- graph Company. The officers of the latter company are: Henry C. Osborn, president and general manager; R. G. A. Phillips, vice president and secretary ; W. C. Dunlap, treas- urer; L. W. Jared, general sales manager ; A. E. Ashburner, foreign sales manager.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.